Dune forests of Pinus pinea and/or Pinus pinaster

Dune forests

Stabilised dunes with forest covering, mainly domestic pine tree (Pinus pinea) and maritime pine tree (Pinus pinaster). Usually non-natural in origin, they substitute potential native vegetation like juniper and chains of psammophiles. Planting pine trees was not confined to fossile dunes with potential for other forest vegetation, but also more recent dunes with grassland vegetation, such as the grey dune in particular.
Its habitat is especially poor of valuable vegetation species that are ‘inherited’ from natural vegetation, particularly where there are natural or induced rehabilitation processes of the original scrubland and maquis, in the clearings, at the edge of the forests and in the least dense pine tree forests.
This habitat covers 9.29 out of 742.48 dry hectars of the SCI, that is 1.3% of its surface area.

Conservation state: currently precarious, due to the human pressure and threats, essentially linked to invasive species, high footfall and fragmentation caused by crowded beach and coastal erosion caused by de-structured dune systems and posidonia beds in the submerged area.